


Werewolves of Southland: Part 1

by gracefulally



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician), American Idol RPF, Kris Allen (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: kradamadness, M/M, Violence, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-12
Updated: 2010-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-30 12:02:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracefulally/pseuds/gracefulally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kris is penniless and Adam is a rock star, who also happens to be a werewolf. Adam's management kidnaps Kris so that wolf!Adam can have a "chew toy." Wolf!Adam turns out to be a lover not a killer, but still a biter. Kris has to cope with being a werewolf. It doesn't go so well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Werewolves of Southland: Part 1

Busk­ing on the streets of West Hol­ly­wood has its good days and its bad days. This is def­in­itely the lat­ter.

Kris knows that he should have known bet­ter than to ac­cept an in­vite from a stranger. Isn’t that what all par­ents told their kids – don’t trust strangers? Still, he was des­per­ate. The rent is over­due and he doesn’t know how much longer his room­mates are go­ing to hold out be­fore he gets the boot, so he ac­cepts the din­ner in­vit­a­tion from Lane, a snappy dressed blonde in a posh car. She praises his looks and mu­sic­al abil­ity, equat­ing him to be a con­tem­por­ary blues trav­el­er.

Kris bites in­to it hook, line, and sinker.

As soon as they pull in­to the Malibu es­tate and the gates close be­hind them, Kris knows something is up. There are se­cur­ity per­son­nel watch­ing their every move and they have _guns_. These are weird look­ing guns, but still guns. Kris didn’t bar­gain for guns. Ac­tu­ally, he didn’t bar­gain for any­thing but a non-ra­men meal. All of this is sup­posed to be gravy, but it’s so not.

A se­cur­ity guard ap­proaches the car as they roll to a stop. His hand is near his gun and he looks stern as he opens Kris’ car door.

“What’s go­ing on?” Kris asks.

Lane pats his hand. “It’s just pre­cau­tion, Kris.”

“Step out of the car,” the man says gruffly be­fore tack­ing on a, “please.”

Kris looks between the guy and Lane, try­ing to stay calm. “I think I should just go, ac­tu­ally.”

“You can’t do that, Kris,” Lane says with a sigh as the se­cur­ity guard raises his gun.

Kris tenses in his seat and in­stinct­ively raises his hands. Lane hits the but­ton on his seat­belt and Kris swal­lows roughly. He shifts out of the seat­belt as his hands be­gin to shake from the fear cours­ing through him.

“I-I really don’t need din­ner,” Kris stam­mers.

The only sound Kris makes is a yelp as the guard fires squarely at his chest. He looks down to see a dart pier­cing through his shirt. “What—?” is all he man­ages to say be­fore he droops in his seat.

His last mo­ments of con­scious­ness are spent watch­ing Lane be­rate the se­cur­ity guard. What the heck did he get him­self in­to?

* * *

When Kris wakes up, he’s ly­ing on a fancy couch of some sort. His eye­lids feel heavy and he can feel his heart beat­ing be­hind his ears. He puts his hand to chest and finds that the dart is gone. He tries to sit up, but im­me­di­ately falls back. His head feels like it weighs a ton and glan­cing around, he finds his vis­ion to be bleary at best. _Great_.

It’s then that he real­izes he’s not alone in the room.

Stand­ing near a book­case on the op­pos­ite side of the room is a man – a really tall, really na­ked man.

“Holy crap,” Kris says grog­gily when he re­cog­nizes the guy’s face. “You’re—you’re—” The name is on the tip of his tongue, but it’s not com­ing out.

“Adam,” the man sup­plies and Kris nods.

“Yeah. Adam Lam­bert.” Kris slowly sits up and drops his feet to the floor. He groans as he drops his aching head in­to his hands. “What’s go­ing on?” he pleads.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you to be afraid.”

Kris looks up, eyes a little wild. “Well, now that you say that—” he be­gins but is cut off when Adam shushes him. “Why are you na­ked?”

Adam laughs quietly, sound­ing pained. “You can’t just shut up and take it, can you, Kris?”

Kris stiffens. Take it? “What do you mean by ‘take it?’”

“You’ll see. It’s al­most time.”

“No of­fense,” Kris be­gins with a frown, “but your hos­pit­al­ity sucks. I’d like to run away, now.”

“Sh­h­hh,” Adam re­peats his shush­ing and crosses the room. Kris backs him­self as far as he can in­to the tiny couch.

“I can feel him,” Adam says, eyes a little wild. “The wolf is com­ing. I’m sorry, baby, but you’re fucked.”

Kris’ hands in­stinct­ively rise, again. What is go­ing on? ‘The wolf is com­ing?’ What the heck? To­night was sup­posed to be cool. He was sup­posed to be hav­ing din­ner. Now, he just wants to be home, in his card­board box of an apart­ment with his three room­mates. They prob­ably won’t even no­tice that he’s gone. They nev­er no­tice when he’s there either.

“What the heck is go­ing on?!” Kris de­mands, stag­ger­ing to his feet and giv­ing Adam frickin’ Lam­bert a shove. “What are you go­ing to do to me?”

The next sev­er­al seconds are straight out of night­mares. Adam arches his back and lets out an in­hu­man moan. Kris stumbles away and finds the nearest wall to sink against as he watches in hor­ror. Adam drops on all fours and huffs. His body be­gins to con­tort and soon there is red­dish-blond hair pop­ping out across his body un­til he’s com­pletely covered. Out of his face a wolfish snout pro­trudes, fol­lowed by large claws on his hands and feet. Kris wills him­self to wake up, but it doesn’t hap­pen. Adam is turn­ing in­to a beast and Kris can’t get his legs to move.

Fi­nally, as Adam whines and a tail pushes out of his back­side, Kris finds the in­stinct to run.

In a mad dash, Kris is bolt­ing past the couch and through the door, out in­to a hall­way that looks like something out of an art magazine with its vaul­ted ceil­ings, moody light­ing, ab­stract paint­ings, and the roy­al blue run­ner strip­ing the marble floor. He real­izes he must be in the man­sion that they pulled up to earli­er. How much earli­er, he doesn’t know. Run­ning down the hall, he frantic­ally tries every door handle, but they’re all locked. Glan­cing around for stairs, he looks back to­ward the room where the scary wolf-man is shift­ing. Kris knows he only has seconds be­fore that thing is com­ing out to pounce and do only Lord knows what to him.

Kris freezes up when a freak­ishly loud howl res­on­ates through the hall­way. He knows he’s dead.

Run­ning flat out is the only op­tion that Kris has left and he makes a break for the end of the hall and hope­fully, stairs up head. He hears a low growl and glances over his shoulder to see the red­dish-blond wolf bound­ing to­ward him. Kris prays for help, an es­cape, any­thing to get him out of this night­mare be­fore he’s hit from be­hind.

Kris smacks for­ward in­to the floor, a face-plant with mo­mentum. He skids a little ways and feels his skin be­ing burned as the blue run­ner ruches up be­neath him. He lifts his dizzy head and hys­ter­ic­ally prays for his death to be quick. He’s shak­ing and suck­ing in whim­per­ing breaths when strong hands with claws grip him and turn him over. Kris shields his face, ter­ri­fied of what he’ll see.

The heavy breath­ing above him sud­denly re­cedes and he’s re­leased. Shocked, Kris lowers his arms and stares in­to a face that is not quite a wolf’s, but close enough. The only hu­man ele­ments are the creature’s eyes – a bright shade of blue, just like Adam’s. The enorm­ous wolf-man is sit­ting be­fore him on its knees, look­ing ex­pect­ant. Kris tries to scramble away, but finds him­self get­ting yanked back by the leg and then held down by a grizzly look­ing hand on his chest.

Ex­pect­ing the killing blow to come, Kris turns his face and flinches. He’s startled when the wolf-man whines. He opens his eyes to see flattened ears and a head ducked in what looks like shame, which is bizarre be­ha­vi­or com­ing from what Kris as­sumes is a fer­al beast.

In the next second, Kris is be­ing lif­ted to his feet. He struggles against the hold, but the wolf-man keeps him held tightly at arm’s length. Kris gasps when he’s quickly hauled for­ward and pressed up against the hair of the creature’s chest. The wolf-man is em­bra­cing him like a friend.

Kris is be­wildered and blinks sev­er­al times be­fore wrench­ing his head back to look up.

“Aren’t you go­ing to kill me?” he asks, still breath­ing heavy as his pulse races. He gets a blank stare for a reply. He can’t be­lieve he ac­tu­ally ex­pec­ted the thing to un­der­stand him. It’s a _wolf_.

Tent­at­ively, Kris wraps his arms around the furry mon­stros­ity be­fore him. In re­turn, he gets a face nuzzle against the top of his head and a wet nose huff­ing in his hair.

This would be kind of nice if it wasn’t so frickin’ weird and scary and a mil­lion oth­er things that _are not nice_.

Kris takes in a sharp breath as the beast ef­fort­lessly hoists him and car­ries him back to the room with the weird couch and book­case. When he’s set back down, Kris no­tices a few more things in the room. His gui­tar case is tucked away to the side of the book­case, clothes are fol­ded in a neat pile on a ta­ble in one corner of the room, there are drop cloths on the floor, and a sheet cov­ers the couch.

Had he been ex­pec­ted to die in here? Well, that was a com­fort­ing thought.

The wolf-man walks away from Kris, to­ward the book­case. Kris gets halfway through a turn to dart out of the door be­fore he’s whipped back around by a fer­al growl. “Okay,” he says as he slowly raises his hands and goes to the couch. The creature’s eyes fol­low him the en­tire time. Kris takes a seat. He really doesn’t want to be mauled.

Kris finds him­self be­ing presen­ted with his gui­tar case, which the wolf-man seems to be hold­ing as gently as pos­sible – still leav­ing a couple scratches marks on the leath­er. Kris won­ders what his back must look like, right now. Tak­ing the gui­tar, Kris looks at the wolf-man du­bi­ously.

“You want me to play?” he asks, which is stu­pid be­cause he knows he’s not go­ing to get an an­swer.

Slowly, Kris re­moves the gui­tar from the case. He swal­lows roughly as he looks war­ily over to the wolf-man, which is tak­ing a seat on the op­pos­ite side of the tiny couch. Kris can feel his seat shift with the new, huge weight. He thinks it would be com­ic­al to see the two of them sit­ting there, like they’re about to have frickin’ tea or something, if the wolf-man didn’t have teeth scar­i­er than Jack Nich­olson’s in that one movie that ter­ri­fied Kris when he was young­er.

His hands are shaky when he goes for a pick and after drop­ping it three times, he de­cides to fore­go the pick al­to­geth­er. As he sets the in­stru­ment on his knee, he won­ders what on earth he should play. Noth­ing comes to him right away and he bites his lip nervously.

Kris ducks his head to look at the gui­tar and to com­mand his hands to stop shak­ing. It sort of works. He plucks out a few chords. The wolf-man huffs a sigh and Kris plucks out a few more chords. Sev­er­al minutes and a few songs pass be­fore the creature moves to the floor at Kris’ feet, tail wag­ging. It then dawns on Kris that the wolf-man is look­ing for com­pan­ion­ship, not a chew-toy.

Well, he could have just said that. _Sheesh_.

Though, that doesn’t ex­plain all of the drop cloths and pre­vent­at­ive meas­ures, nor the “sorry, baby, you’re fucked.” Kris fig­ures that Adam’s wolf side had been vi­ol­ent in the past and in hopes of giv­ing the wolf an out­let for the ag­gres­sion and blood lust, he was picked up off the streets and locked in here. It’s a spooky re­flec­tion on his part. And who knew that were­wolves ac­tu­ally ex­is­ted? He cer­tainly didn’t.

Kris gets a sud­den chill from his thoughts and stops play­ing as he shivers. He’d really like to wake up, now, if pos­sible.

In the quiet of the room, Kris real­izes that beast is heav­ily snor­ing. Kris has put it to sleep with the mu­sic. Care­fully, Kris sets the gui­tar down on the couch and sound­lessly stands up to creep his way out of the room. He speeds up the fur­ther he gets from the room, and by the time he reaches finds a stair­case, he’s run­ning. His heart pounds as he bar­rels down the stair­case, tak­ing the stairs two at a time. He races to large front door and gives its handle a shake. He’s dis­traught when it’s not un­locked.

Kris looks back over his shoulder and sees no sign of the wolf-man. At first, he beats on the door with fists and his feet, but it’s too thick to budge and if there’s someone out there in the night, they’re not listen­ing. His next at­tempt to get out is to take a chair to a nearby win­dow. He stumbles back, away from the shattered glass be­fore ap­proach­ing, again. He’s stopped by the or­nate bars that are barely close enough to­geth­er to pre­vent his es­cape. Kris lets out a yell through the bars.

“Help me!” he cries out at a volume that’s sure to leave him hoarse.

He de­cides to smash the op­pos­ite win­dow for good meas­ure and lets out an­oth­er yell, ready to make as much noise as pos­sible in hopes that someone will hear. He grips at the bars and gives them an angry shake. When he hears the woof­ing noise echo­ing from up­stairs he sinks down to his knees. He’s doomed.

The wolf-man looks an­noyed when he ap­proaches stand­ing tall on two legs. The hu­man fea­tures of his face are show­ing through as his large eye­brows are bent in­to a V-shape. Kris cowers away. He has a sud­den in­take of breath when the wolf-man grabs the front of his shirt and lifts him off of the floor. Kris in­stinct­ively grips the creature’s furry wrists for sup­port as his feet dangle in the air. The wolf-man’s eyes study him, look­ing hurt.

“I-I’m sorry,” Kris says, voice shaky. He lifts a hand and tent­at­ively pets the wolf-man’s muzzle. He cringes when the beast ducks to lick his face, breath hot and heavy and tongue wet. He doesn’t squirm when the wolf-man eas­ily slings him over a shoulder and heads back up­stairs, nails click­ing on the marble floor.

The wolf-man makes a dif­fer­ent turn down the hall when they reach the second floor. They come to a stop at what Kris as­sumes is a door­way, which he con­firms when the creature sets him down. Dizzy, Kris holds onto the wall as he watches the creature break in­to the room with one rough push that shat­ters the wood around the lock.

It’s a guest bed­room. Kris’ eyes go fear­fully wide as the wolf-man at­tempts to pull him in­to the room. Kris fights it with all of his might, kick­ing at the creature and beat­ing a fist against the gnarly look­ing hand that’s hold­ing his arm. He has an epi­phany and kicks the beast in the groin, hard. With a whim­per­ing yelp, the wolf-man lets go and Kris stumbles in­to a run. He doesn’t know where he’s go­ing. He just knows that noth­ing good can come of go­ing in­to a bed­room with that _thing_.

Kris cries out in pain as he’s brought down by claws in his back. He finds him­self smacked against the floor for the second time that night, but this time he struggles to get free. His yell is tor­tured as teeth latch onto his shoulder and pierce the skin. He fig­ures that the creature could do much worse dam­age than a simple bite and stops squirm­ing. He lays there, chest pressed against the floor and breath­ing shal­low, for sev­er­al seconds as the wolf-man holds him down. Even­tu­ally, Kris goes limp. He’s ex­hausted and there’s no way he can stop whatever is go­ing to hap­pen.

The creature re­lents on his hold on Kris. The next thing Kris knows, he’s be­ing scooped up in­to strong, furry arms. The pain of the wolf bite makes Kris so dizzy that he be­gins to slip in and out of con­scious­ness. He catches sight of the blood on his shirt and shud­ders from the sheer agony of the wound.

Kris finds him­self be­ing taken in­to the dreaded bed­room and placed on the bed, which he des­per­ately tries to sink in­to to hide. The bed shifts as the wolf-man climbs in­to it with him. Kris’ breath catches and holds in ter­ror, but he doesn’t dare move, fear­ing what the creature will do to him next.

As care­ful as a gi­ant beast can move, the wolf-man curls him­self around Kris. It licks the wound on Kris’ shoulder and Kris’ breath comes out in a whoosh with an ac­com­pa­ny­ing strangled cry. The beast’s soft, bushy tail flicks up and down Kris’ torso un­til it settles on his ab­do­men. Kris pets the tail slowly with shaky hands and swal­lows gulps of air, try­ing to re­main con­scious. The wolf-man con­tin­ues to lick his wound un­til Kris ac­tu­ally gets the gall to nudge the creature away. The wolf-man quickly laps at his face, which makes Kris laugh nervously, and it lays his head on Kris’ chest. Sev­er­al minutes pass be­fore Kris hears and feels the sol­id breath­ing of sleep from the beast.

In­ev­it­ably, Kris passes out from pain.

* * *

Kris’ shoulder aching to a point that startles him from sleep, he looks down to see a vaguely fa­mil­i­ar head of black hair and a freckled arm draped across him. It’s morn­ing. Adam must have shif­ted back while he was out cold. Quickly, Kris rolls out from un­der­neath Adam and hits the floor on all fours. He sees stars from the pain of the land­ing.

De­li­ri­ous, he hoarsely shouts, “Help me!” to no one be­fore col­lapsing and hold­ing his shoulder.

Kris shud­ders as he hears Adam rous­ing, who breathes out a shocked “You’re alive!”

Kris curls in­to the fetal po­s­i­tion as Adam moves to the floor next to him. “Oh babe,” Adam la­ments, “you need a doc­tor.” Adam puts the back of a hand to his cheek and Kris scowls, pulling away from Adam.

“Don’t touch me,” Kris spits out.

Adam looks taken aback. He goes to his knees and puts a gentle hand on Kris’ arm. “Move back to the bed. They’ll be com­ing soon.”

“Who’s com­ing?” Kris asks with a stern brow.

Adam pauses be­fore duck­ing his eyes. “The clean­ers.”

Kris is furi­ous when he takes a shaky breath. “To re­move my body, right?” he snaps. “Isn’t that the whole point to this?”

Adam is chew­ing his lip when he meets Kris’ eyes. “Yes,” he sadly ad­mits. “We all thought that he – I needed ‘someone to play with.’” Adam em­phas­izes with air quotes.

The genu­ine re­morse is lost on Kris, who is still hav­ing trouble see­ing through the pain. It en­rages him to think that they were treat­ing him like some toy for Adam, that they were so brazen about tak­ing a hu­man life. Celebrit­ies could get away with any­thing, he sup­posed. Well, Adam frickin’ Lam­bert wasn’t get­ting away with this. No sir.

“So, what now?” Kris de­mands. “Are you go­ing to kill me? Hide the evid­ence?”

Adam, who was already look­ing a stun­ning sal­low shade, pales even fur­ther. “No. I’d nev­er – I’d nev­er let them do that!” he stam­mers.

It isn’t ex­actly a ringing vote of con­fid­ence. Kris doesn’t trust Adam. “I don’t be­lieve you,” he replies lowly be­fore shiv­er­ing. His shoulder and head both are aching.

Adam gasps softly. “Please, Kris, you’re fe­ver­ish,” he pleads. “Get back in­to bed. I’d nev­er let any­one hurt you. Not now. Not when you’re…” he trails off be­fore fin­ish­ing, “marked.”

Kris eyes Adam sus­pi­ciously. He doesn’t like that word “marked” and the way Adam says it, like he’s scared of it, doesn’t help. “What are you talk­ing about?”

Chew­ing his bot­tom lip, Adam leans over Kris once more to del­ic­ately place his hand against Kris’ fore­head and then down his cheek. “You’ll have an in­fec­tion,” he says quietly. “I had one, too. It las­ted for days. The meds did noth­ing.”

“Adam,” Kris says evenly, “what do you mean I’m ‘marked?’”

Adam swal­lows thickly. His ex­pres­sion is filled with com­pas­sion. Kris doesn’t like where this is headed. Adam leans down and kisses the bi­cep of Kris’ in­jured arm. He then runs the soft pad of his thumb over the spot. Kris wants to deck him, now that Adam is close enough, but can’t bring him­self to mar Adam’s face. Kris sighs. He’s such a pa­ci­fist.

“You’re like me,” Adam fi­nally an­swers. “Every full moon, you’re go­ing to be­come the wolf.”

Kris opens his angry mouth to ask why this is hap­pen­ing, but Adam shushes him.

“He – I bit you. I bit you while I was the wolf. That’s how it gets passed along.”

“I – I don’t be­lieve you!” Kris growls and yanks his arm away. He yelps at the pain it causes in his shoulder.

Adam tilts his head. “It doesn’t mat­ter, baby,” he says in a gentle tone. “It’s go­ing to hap­pen.”

Cau­tiously, Adam drags his fin­gers through Kris’ mussed hair. Again, part of Kris wants to punch him, to take out his an­ger, but he can’t do it. He can’t do it be­cause he’s on the verge of cry­ing. His eyes shine be­fore he squeezes them shut and mut­ters to him­self. He can’t handle this. How can any­one handle this? He’s go­ing to be a frickin’ were­wolf? That doesn’t even _sound_ sane.

“So, what now?” Kris de­mands through a clenched jaw. “What hap­pens to me?”

Adam stops his pet­ting to cup Kris’ face and turn it to­ward him. “I want you to stay here. Please, stay here, Kris.”

“No. Heck no!” Kris spits out and jerks away. “I’m get­ting out of here as soon as those clean­ers get here.”

Shak­ing his head, Adam reaches out and traces his fin­gers along Kris’ jaw. “If that’s what you want.”

“Yes!”

“I don’t want you to go. It’s go­ing to be dan­ger­ous out there for you.”

Kris’ eyes nar­row. “I don’t care what you…” He trails off as the sound of men’s voices carry up the stairs. “Fi­nally,” Kris says in ex­as­per­a­tion. He’s then strug­gling to sit up. Adam tries to help, but Kris shrugs him off. “Help!” Kris shouts. “Help me, please!”

Adam backs off, look­ing ashamed, as feet pound on the stair­case. Kris glowers at him be­fore a man in over­hauls ap­pears in the smashed door­way.

“Ah, shit,” the tall, burly man says, “he’s alive.”

* * *

Kris re­fuses to see Adam’s doc­tor. He re­fuses to do any­thing that Adam asks him to do by re­peatedly say­ing that he wants to be as far away as pos­sible. It hurts Adam’s feel­ings, but Kris hon­estly doesn’t give a crap. He also re­fuses to do any­thing that the cleanup crew and se­cur­ity guards tell him to do, which is how he ends up get­ting dumped out­side of the emer­gency room. He con­siders kiss­ing the ground, but he’s be­ing pulled in­side be­fore he has the chance.

That’s where things get com­plic­ated.

Kris doesn’t have health in­sur­ance, which is a big frickin’ prob­lem as far as the hos­pit­al is con­cerned. The trauma doc­tor doesn’t spend much time with him, but it’s long enough for Kris to find out that he has a nasty in­fec­tion in his shoulder. He can’t af­ford the sur­gery that would clean all of it up quickly, so in­stead, they stick an IV in him and pump him full of an­ti­bi­ot­ics.

The fact that there’s a bite and scrapes from something an­im­al doesn’t even faze the doc­tor. Kris can tell that they want him out of the E.R. as soon as pos­sible. When his in­fec­tion ex­acer­bates no mat­ter which com­bin­a­tion of an­ti­bi­ot­ics they give him, it just makes mat­ters worse. That’s when ques­tions start get­ting asked, and when Kris says he was at­tacked by a wolf, no one be­lieves him. Since when are there wolves in the urb­an jungle of Los Angeles? Maybe he’s a junkie look­ing for a fix?

Now, he not only feels like he’s dy­ing, but he’s be­ing ac­cused of be­ing a ly­ing user. _Fant­ast­ic._

As Kris is dis­charged, he’s armed with wound dress­ing ma­ter­i­als and three pill bottles, two an­ti­bi­ot­ics and a paink­iller, with the doc­tor sternly re­mind­ing him that only he can take the pills. The hos­pit­al staff gives him a scrub shirt to wear, his torn and bloody t-shirt hav­ing been dis­carded. Though he feels like death, Kris still thanks every­one who helped him and leaves with his battered gui­tar case in-hand.

The walk home takes Kris more than three hours. More than once he has to shrug off a free ride from a thick-necked guy that he’s cer­tain is one of Adam’s goons. Even­tu­ally, he takes a short­cut through a friend’s greasy-spoon diner and loses what he’s con­vinced is a tail thanks to a net­work of al­leys. At that mo­ment, he feels like he’s in an ac­tion movie or something, but the hu­mor is quickly for­got­ten be­cause his shoulder really frickin’ hurts. He col­lapses on his bed as soon as he gets home. 

He doesn’t get up for three days.

The in­fec­tion is hor­rible and Adam was right, the med­ic­a­tion does noth­ing to help it. He lies list­lessly in bed, do­ing noth­ing but oc­ca­sion­ally moan­ing as the pain spikes. He’s sur­prised when one of his room­mates ac­tu­ally takes the time to check on him when he doesn’t move for over twenty hours. His fever runs high, to a point that his room­mate con­siders tak­ing him back to the emer­gency room, but Kris re­fuses. His bill is go­ing to be high enough already. In­stead, he prays for the strength to live through it.

On the fifth day, the fever and the worst of the pain fi­nally break. Kris man­ages to eat something oth­er than ra­men and hobbles his way in­to a shower. He’s a wreck, but he fig­ures his already hit rock bot­tom, and that’s when he starts to hear the ru­mors from his room­mates. Someone has been look­ing for him. They’ve been wav­ing around a re­cent pic­ture of him from a se­cur­ity feed and ask­ing ques­tions. People who’re like Kris don’t like ques­tions. They don’t want to be in­volved. Kris is grate­ful to live amongst a com­munity of small-time people like him­self; he doesn’t want to be found.

Re­gard­less of what Kris wants, they find him any­way.

Kris ends up on the streets after his in­fec­tion passes. There’s only so much his room­mates are will­ing to put up with – not pay­ing his share of the rent is not one of them. Busk­ing and play­ing in bars are out of the ques­tion. He can barely lift the gui­tar. He peddles what he can, hop­ing to come up with enough to af­ford a meal, let alone rent. That’s when _she_ shows up. Again. Lane tries to get him to come with her, to live with Adam, but all Kris does is snap at her and threaten to go to the po­lice. They both know the po­lice won’t be­lieve him, but at least it makes her back off. Still, he knows he’s be­ing watched when he spots the same dark green car on the street wherever he goes.

After a week of be­ing fol­lowed, Kris is fed up and does go to the po­lice. The of­ficer he speaks to du­ti­fully takes down his state­ment and ac­cus­a­tion of be­ing stalked. The only evid­ence Kris has is a li­cense plate num­ber and Lane’s re­peated ap­proaches. He con­siders bring­ing up the kid­nap­ping and mak­ing due on his prom­ise to him­self that he won’t let Adam get away with everything, but he has noth­ing to show them ex­cept a heal­ing wolf bite on his shoulder and that’s not very con­vin­cing. So, he leaves the kid­nap­ping out.

Kris as­sumes that the po­lice checked up with Lane be­cause she doesn’t both­er him after he makes the re­port.

Adam’s in­flu­ence doesn’t stop there, though. Kris’ hos­pit­al bills mi­ra­cu­lously dis­ap­pear thanks to a “dona­tion” from a gen­er­ous “mod­el cit­izen” as he’s told when he in­quires about the zero bal­ance on his ac­count. His rent gets paid, too, which Kris only tol­er­ates be­cause he’s un­able to work for the money and he needs a place to stay.

When the next month rolls around, Kris is well enough to re­sume play­ing for tips on the streets and in loc­al bars. Everything seems fine and dandy un­til someone in a hooded sweat­shirt shows up to toss a couple hun­dred dol­lars in­to his gui­tar case. Kris stares in shock up in­to the eyes of the kind pat­ron. Kris im­me­di­ately stops play­ing to lean down and pick up the money. He crinkles it in his palm be­fore shout­ing after the fa­mil­i­ar face.

“I don’t want your char­ity, Adam!”

Adam doesn’t turn around. Kris pock­ets the cash, in­tend­ing to donate it to a shel­ter, later. It’s not like Adam needs the money and Kris re­fuses to spend it. He doesn’t need Adam’s help to live.

An­oth­er week passes and Kris grows rest­less. He doesn’t know why he’s be­come so snippy. He thinks it could be con­sequence of los­ing sleep when he wakes up each night in a cold sweat after dream­ing about be­ing chased through a man­sion by a wolf-man, but whatever it is, his poor at­ti­tude gets old really fast. It’s not like him to be so sour and ag­gress­ive. He’s sup­posed to be the kind, humble South­ern boy not an ir­rit­able prima donna.

So, he calls his mom, hop­ing that she’ll have something to say that will soothe his in­ner-demons. He tells her very little about the past month of his life. There’s a prob­lem, though. Kris could nev­er get away with ly­ing to his mom, not even over the phone. When he says he was bit­ten by an an­im­al, she’s con­cerned, but he calms her down by point­ing out that he’s since been all patched up. They talk about his money situ­ation and when he’ll next be able to come home. They both know it’s go­ing be much later than either wants to think about. Still, talk­ing to her, just hear­ing her voice, makes him happy.

It does noth­ing for the rest­less feel­ing.

Kris even­tu­ally goes out of his way to stop in an in­ter­net café and look up the lun­ar cycle. The full moon is in less than five days. Kris con­vinces him­self that he’s just be­ing para­noid and that noth­ing is go­ing to hap­pen. The next few days and nights pass without in­cid­ent, which re­as­sures Kris that Adam was just mess­ing with his head. He’s not go­ing to be­come a wolf.

Kris is walk­ing home from play­ing on a street corner, though he has plans to go to a bar later in the even­ing to play for two to three hours for a little bit of money. Dusk is just passing and he’s feel­ing grouch­i­er than ever. He’s round­ing a corner when the tun­nel vis­ion hits him. It’s so sud­den and start­ling that he nearly drops his gui­tar case. He blinks but it doesn’t go away as his heart be­gins to ham­mer at his temples. Severe pain in his joints comes next and Kris falls to the ground in an al­ley two blocks away from his apart­ment, mak­ing noises just like Adam had the month be­fore. He looks at his hands woe­fully as he breathes hard, telling him­self that this is not hap­pen­ing.

Grit­ting his teeth, Kris heav­ily drops to his side on the pave­ment and im­me­di­ately loses con­scious­ness.

* * *

Kris is ly­ing face down on con­crete when he wakes up. His body feels broken and his breath­ing is labored. Slowly, he lifts him­self up and goes to his knees. The move­ment causes a skull-numb­ing head rush and he ducks along­side the curb of the side­walk to vomit in the street. He coughs and sput­ters as his body gets the shakes. He con­tin­ues to wretch; the steely taste of blood on his tongue. If he had two brain cells to rub to­geth­er he would be hop­ing it was his own, but right now, Kris is hard-pressed to re­call his own name.

When the dizzi­ness passes, Kris heaves for breath and glances up to the sky. It’s dawn. He made it through the night and he feels like death for do­ing so.

He sits there for a short while, breath­ing slowly in an at­tempt to calm the pulse flut­ter­ing be­hind his ears. It sort of works. He blinks and cas­u­ally takes in his sur­round­ings with wide eyes. He has ab­so­lutely no idea where he is. None. Noth­ing about this block looks fa­mil­i­ar.

As the ad­ren­aline re­cedes, Kris starts to feel the aches and pains of whatever happened last night. He glances down at his arms to see them covered in long scratches, like he was either at­tacked by an un­wieldy thorn bush or someone with nails was try­ing to fight him off. The lat­ter thought sick­ens him and it’s com­poun­ded by the taste of fresh blood on his tongue. Had he bit­ten someone last night?

Kris promptly pukes up the rest of his stom­ach con­tents in­to the street.

Wip­ing his mouth with his scratched up arm isn’t the best idea so he goes for his shirt and finds it hanging in tat­ters from his shoulders. He wipes his mouth on the in­tact hem and swal­lows over his parched tongue. He would really like to get that taste out of his mouth.

Between the pain and dizzi­ness in his head and the queas­i­ness in his stom­ach, he won­ders if he’ll ever find his equi­lib­ri­um again. Slowly, Kris starts to stand, but he finds his feet to be wobbly at best and takes a mo­ment to find his foot­ing. His bare feet scrape along the side­walk as he cau­tiously walks, afraid he might topple at any second. It hurts to take more than a few steps thanks to an un­ex­plained bruise on his right hip. Ac­tu­ally, as he grows more aware of his body, he finds sev­er­al mys­ter­i­ous bruises and cloth­ing tears. And his shoes, they are nowhere to be seen. 

“Hey buddy, you got the time?”

It takes Kris a mo­ment to real­ize that the guy in the bean­ie and sunglasses is talk­ing to him. In­stinct­ively, Kris looks at his wrist, though he knows he doesn’t wear a watch. He slowly shakes his head, which just makes him diz­zi­er.

“Nah, man, I…” Kris’ eyes go a little wide when he looks up to see the glint of a knife. Pulse be­gin­ning to ramp up, Kris raises his shaky hands. “Look, man—”

“Get your drunk ass in­to that al­ley,” the knife-wield­er says and mo­tions with said knife to­ward the nearest al­ley between build­ings.

Kris makes a sorry look­ing at­tempt to walk over to the al­ley and finds him­self be­ing led in­to the al­ley with a little help from the friendly neigh­bor­hood thief. “Wal­let, now!” the man snaps after shov­ing Kris to­wards a brick wall, which Kris col­lides with and sinks against slightly.

Hands rov­ing, Kris pats around try­ing to find his wal­let, keys, any­thing, but is dis­mayed when he finds noth­ing. He out­turns his ripped pock­ets and fi­nally, just shrugs.

“That’s it?” the thief says an­grily.

Kris teeters as he pushes off the wall. “Things got a little crazy, last night, man,” he mumbles. “I don’t know even know what day it is.”

“I know you got an ATM card!”

“Nope,” Kris says. “Sorry, man, eco­nomy sucks for us all.”

Kris sees the punch com­ing, right as his face con­nects with the guy’s fist. He’s knocked back in­to the brick wall, smack­ing against it be­fore he slips down to land hard on his ass.

“Jerk,” Kris grumbles as his vis­ion swims and he watches the thief run away. Now, he has an­oth­er po­lice re­port to make. _Great_.

Touch­ing his face, Kris winces and comes back with bloody fin­ger­tips from a bus­ted lip. He groans and won­ders if this morn­ing could get any worse?

It does when he’s a couple blocks over and stopped by some cops that mis­take him for a drunk who had a wild night. Kris tries to ex­plain that he’s just been mugged, but they’re not buy­ing it. He passes the breath­alyz­er test, but the fact that his clothes are ripped to shreds, his face is pummeled, he’s ID-less, and he can’t put his shoe­less feet one in front of the oth­er are enough for them to pick him up. His ir­rit­able at­ti­tude doesn’t win him any points on the ride to the sta­tion, either.

When it’s time for his hal­lowed one-and-only phone call, he knows his room­mates will be of no help. Call­ing his par­ents would prob­ably make the situ­ation worse. So, Kris de­cides to do something drastic. He re­quests to calls Lane, her num­ber in­grained in his mind thanks to the num­ber of busi­ness cards she’s shoved in­to his hand in the past month. She’s the con­nec­tion to the money that will make this move faster.

“Hey, sorry it’s early and sorry I snapped at you…” is all Kris man­ages to mumble in­to the phone be­fore she cuts him off.

“What are they hold­ing you for?”

Kris sighs. “Iden­ti­fic­a­tion. I’m not in the sys­tem and I kind of lost mine last night, when…” he winces, “…you know?”

“Got it,” she quips. “I’ll handle this. You rest.”

She’s gone be­fore Kris gets the chance to thank her. Hand­ing back the phone, Kris fol­lows the of­ficer as he trudges backs to the hold­ing cell.

Sur­pris­ingly, Kris does get some rest. He looks beat to all hell, but re­fuses med­ic­al treat­ment in fa­vor of sink­ing down in a corner of the cell and just passing out for a little while. There are a few oth­ers with him, but for some blessed reas­on, they leave him alone.

Kris doesn’t pay at­ten­tion to how many hours pass, but it seems like it’s tak­ing forever. Of course, that could just be him feel­ing agit­ated for the second day in a row, but really, he thought she would be quick­er. Still, he’s re­lieved to see her when they call his name to step for­ward.

“Let’s get you home,” she says as they walk out to her car after go­ing through the re­lease pro­cess.

Kris slows so he can look at her to show that he’s ser­i­ous. “Ac­tu­ally,” he sighs, “I’d like to see Adam.”

Lane just smiles and keeps walk­ing. Kris sucks on his bruised lip and ambles after her.

* * *

Anxi­ety fills Kris’ thoughts as they near the gates of Adam’s es­tate. He can’t help the creepy feel­ing that he’s go­ing to be jumped or shot at any giv­en mo­ment when he sees a se­cur­ity guard watch­ing them as they pull up to the man­sion. Adam and an older man in a suit are out­side on the steps lead­ing to the or­nately carved front door that haunts Kris’ dreams.

Kris doesn’t real­ize that he’s shak­ing un­til Lane puts a hand to his shoulder and he gasps softly. Lane looks con­cerned, but Kris puts on a stern face. “I’m all right,” he says as he pushes her hand away be­fore get­ting out of the car.

The man­sion is a grand sight with its pil­lars and bal­conies, which still awe Kris even on his second view­ing. He can’t help but feel in­tim­id­ated as he looks up to the three-floor home. There are prob­ably a lot of places for a body to get lost in there.

After in­tro­duc­tions are made, Kris is led in­side to a sit­ting room with a couch that he would nor­mally feel guilty for sit­ting on in his filthy state, but today, he’s too tired and agit­ated to care. The guy in a suit turns out to be Dr. Huff­s­tut­ler, Adam’s doc­tor, who was called in after Lane had told Adam that they were com­ing. Adam stands in a corner of the room, fid­get­ing, as Kris is ex­amined. Kris grumbles and hisses as the doc­tor pokes at him and or­ders him around, check­ing for broken bones and more ser­i­ous in­jur­ies.

“Are you done?” Kris asks testily, blink­ing rap­idly as the doc­tor puts away his pen light.

Dr. Huff­s­tut­ler smiles thinly. “One more ques­tion,” he says and folds his hands. Kris raises his brow. “Do you have any ques­tions for me?”

Kris swal­lows roughly and glances down at the angry red marks on his arms. “Are the scratches from a per­son?”

Sigh­ing, Dr. Huff­s­tut­ler takes a closer look at Kris’ arms. He runs his fin­ger along one par­tic­u­larly deep mark that broke the skin of Kris’ fore­arm. “It’s im­possible to tell,” Dr. Huff­s­tut­ler says as he sits back in his chair. “It’s likely that you made them your­self when you were…” his voice trails off.

“A wolf,” Kris sup­plies, which gets a nod.

“I’ve in­jured my­self plenty of times,” Adam adds be­fore com­ing to take a seat next to Kris on the couch and give his shoulder a squeeze. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Kris says with a frown as he shrugs Adam off. “We need to talk,” he adds firmly. “I think you know why I’m really here and it’s not to get a phys­ic­al.”

Dr. Huff­s­tut­ler clears his throat and stands. “Ice that chin. I’ll leave some oint­ment for the scratches. You should shower and eat something.”

“Thanks,” Kris says as he shakes Dr. Huff­s­tut­ler’s hand.

Dr. Huff­s­tut­ler’s part­ing words, “As al­ways, Adam and now Kris, your secret is safe,” aren’t very re­as­sur­ing to Kris. He doesn’t trust any­one in this house.

“Would you like a shower and maybe some fresh clothes?” Adam asks, put­ting a hand near Kris on the couch.

“No thanks,” Kris says, still frown­ing. “I’d really like to talk one-on-one,” he adds as he eyes the se­cur­ity guard passing the door­way.

“Of course,” Adam replies with a nod. “This way,” he says as he stands and holds a hand out to Kris.

Kris snubs Adam and pushes him­self up off of the couch, win­cing as he does so. “I’m fine,” he spits out when Adam puts a hand on his arm to steady him.

Adam sighs and slowly leads the way to an­oth­er room on the first floor. It’s a second sit­ting room, but this one has a door, which Adam shuts as soon as they’re in­side. The closed door makes Kris’ anxi­ety spike, but at least they have pri­vacy. Adam waits for Kris to take a seat on the sec­tion­al couch be­fore join­ing him. Kris leans for­ward on his knees and rubs his hands over his face.

“How are you feel­ing?” Adam asks with a sym­path­et­ic frown that Kris can see through his fin­gers.

Kris rolls his eyes and lets his hands fall. “Do I look that bad?”

“You look like shit, babe.”

Nod­ding, Kris presses his lips to­geth­er. He knows he’s pretty beat up and likely smells bad. He prob­ably should have taken the of­fer on that shower. “Yeah. Thanks,” he says with a sigh.

“You also look like you have a lot of ques­tions,” Adam says care­fully.

“Un­der­state­ment.”

“Ask me any­thing you want.”

Kris looks at his hands, curl­ing and un­curl­ing his fin­gers, won­der­ing what they look like when trans­formed. “How long have you been deal­ing with this?”

“About a year,” Adam replies with a tilt of his head as he looks at Kris with com­pas­sion in his eyes. “It gets easi­er,” he adds after a pause.

Kris scoffs. “I don’t see how it could.”

“You don’t worry as much. The first time is def­in­itely the worst, but if you have people to sup­port you, it’s not that bad.”

“You’re un­be­liev­able,” Kris says with a shake of his head. “Just be­cause you can throw money at it doesn’t change the facts. You’re a wolf. You hurt people.” Kris ducks his eyes. “I can’t live with that.”

“Oh please,” Adam huffs and Kris looks up in time to see a roll of his eyes. “The money just buys me a big­ger house to ram­page through.” He leans closer and levels his voice. “Kris, I’ve had plenty of sui­cid­al thoughts, but trust me, they get you nowhere on the path to ac­cept­ance.”

“Ac­cept­ing what?” Kris asks, feel­ing in­cred­u­lous and ir­rit­ated. “That I’m a wolf every full moon? That I can hurt people without be­ing able to stop my­self?” He balls his hands in­to fists. “I can’t even re­mem­ber what happened!”

“That’s part of it. You re­mem­ber noth­ing,” Adam ex­plains be­fore shrug­ging. “So, why worry about it?”

“Be­cause I care!” Kris snaps and pounds his fist on his knee. “You can’t tell me you don’t care! If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be do­ing all of this.”

Adam lets out a testy nas­al sigh as his mouth presses in­to a thin line. “I didn’t say I don’t care. You think I lock my­self in here for fun? Have you seen the bars on the win­dows? It’s so I don’t get out. It’s so I don’t hurt people.”

Kris’ eyes nar­row. “But bring­ing someone in to chew on, that’s okay.”

“That,” Adam says as he shakes his head, “was a ser­i­ous lapse in judg­ment and should have nev­er happened.”

“Then, why?” Kris de­mands. “Why me?”

Adam sits back. A si­lence passes as Kris seethes at Adam. He’s cer­tain he’s nev­er been more angry or up­set in his life. He’s ready to lash out, but can’t bring him­self to do it. Hurt­ing oth­er people, that’s not who he is.

“Look at you,” Adam says, ges­tur­ing at Kris with a wave. “You’re ready to bash my face in, aren’t you?”

“I’ve con­sidered it.”

“So what’s stop­ping you?” Adam chal­lenges.

Kris reins him­self in and blinks. “I just – I just can’t, okay?”

“It’s be­cause you’re a good per­son,” Adam ex­plains. “You still have that left. After a year of be­ing alone with this, my good will was so fuck­ing gone that I couldn’t cope. That agit­a­tion you feel? It was to an ex­treme that I felt like the wolf was start­ing to take over. I wasn’t me any­more. And when I was the wolf…” He shud­ders. “We thought I was go­ing to end up break­ing out and killing my en­tire staff.” He pauses to brush his hair away from his eyes. “So, giv­ing the wolf ‘someone to chew on’ seemed like the best idea.”

Kris swal­lows roughly dur­ing Adam’s ram­bling. He lets Adam keep go­ing be­cause he wants to un­der­stand, but all he hears is ex­cuses for murder. He can’t sym­path­ize with that. He’d rather kill him­self, first.

Shak­ing his head in dis­gust, Kris can’t bring him­self to even look at Adam. “I think I’ve heard enough,” he says quietly.

“I don’t blame you if you hate me,” Adam says. “But all I can say is that I’m sorry.”

Hate is a strong word and Kris isn’t sure he’d use it to de­scribe the mix­ture of feel­ings he has for Adam. Kris is a for­giv­ing per­son, but he can’t bring him­self to for­give Adam for mak­ing his life hell, not yet. It’s still too fresh. Still, he knows he can’t leave, as badly as he wants to. Even if they kill each oth­er on the flip side, Kris knows that this man­sion can con­tain him. He’s already seen it, firsthand, con­tain a wolf.

Kris stares at his hands and won­ders what dam­age he’s already done. He feels a sud­den weight on his chest and breathes in a deep breath to push back against it. This is so messed up; he still can’t be­lieve it’s real.

“If I can’t con­vince you that it’s go­ing to be okay,” Adam says tent­at­ively, “can I at least con­vince you to take a shower, put on some clean clothes, and eat something be­fore dark?”

Kris closes his eyes. He knows that to­night means an­oth­er am­ne­sia-filled morn­ing. “Yeah,” he says softly be­fore stiffly stand­ing up. “That sounds great.”

* * *

Kris takes his time in the shower. It gives him a chance to think, and he spends most of it with his hands planted on the wall, let­ting the hot wa­ter run over his head and down his aching and ex­hausted back. He re­flects on his con­ver­sa­tion with Adam while con­tinu­ing to struggle with the idea that he is some sort of creature of the night. It’s dif­fi­cult to wrap his head around.

Adam had been prac­tic­ally _gentle_ as a wolf in com­par­is­on to Kris’ wild nature while trans­formed. At least, that is what he fig­ures, giv­en the state of his body. Maybe he’ll calm down in the fu­ture, or maybe one of them will end up killing the oth­er to­night. It’s mor­bid to think about the pos­sib­il­it­ies that could end in death. A part of Kris hopes it will hap­pen. He can’t live with wak­ing up on ran­dom streets with the tang of blood in his mouth.

After the shower, Kris pulls on the clothes Adam gave him – a plain black t-shirt, a pair of pa­jama pants that he has to roll the top of so he’s not walk­ing on them, and some fluffy house shoes that make him feel like he’s con­tinu­ally walk­ing on pil­lows. The fact that there’s no un­der­wear doesn’t both­er him. He’d rather go com­mando than wear an­oth­er dude’s box­ers. That’s just weird.

It’s late in the af­ter­noon when he fi­nally shuffles out of the bath­room with a tow­el on his shoulders and his hair a damp mess. He’s mildly creeped out to find Adam wait­ing for him in the hall­way look­ing sheep­ish. He raises his brow, but doesn’t ask how long Adam has been stand­ing there.

“Um,” Kris hums awk­wardly after they’ve been star­ing at each oth­er for sev­er­al seconds, long enough for an ap­proach­ing maid to look between them and ex­cuse her­self.

Adam blinks. “Sorry, it’s just—” he be­gins, but then shakes his head. “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat a horse,” Kris says as he roughs up his hair with the tow­el. He pauses. “Er, not that I ac­tu­ally want to eat horse.”

Adam laughs and Kris real­izes it’s the first time he’s seen Adam genu­inely smile. It briefly breaks the ten­sion between them, which is nice.

“I think we’re fresh out of horse, but we’ll find you something,” Adam says, turn­ing to walk and ges­tur­ing for Kris to fol­low.

The kit­chen is huge. Kris won­ders why any­one out­side of that “Bam!” guy on TV would need a kit­chen like this, but he’s not com­plain­ing. The place is full of food that he can’t see, but can smell. His eyes sud­denly feel as big as his stom­ach, which rumbles as he’s sniff­ing the air to take it all in.

“I don’t know what you want,” Adam says as he goes to one of two re­fri­ger­at­ors, “but I’m a freak when it comes to food. I don’t eat a lot of meat, but I’m sure we have some chick­en.”

Chick­en? Kris’ stom­ach makes an­oth­er gurgle as he raises him­self up onto a stool at an is­land counter in the middle of the room. “Chick­en’s great. I’d even eat it out of a can if I have to.” It cer­tainly wouldn’t be the first time.

Adam scrunches his face as if Kris had said something ter­ribly dis­gust­ing. “You’re de­lu­sion­al if think I have chick­en in a can,” he says.

Kris snorts lightly. “Sorry, was that of­fens­ive?”

“Ex­tremely,” Adam replies with a slight frown be­fore go­ing back to the fridge. He hums as he lifts and pushes around a few things. “Do you like chick­en curry?”

“Yeah,” Kris says with a yawn be­fore sit­ting up straight­er. “I mean, yes, thank you.”

Adam nods and pulls out a little tub of what Kris as­sumes is the curry. He also grabs a bottle of something and sets it down in front of Kris. “Drink that.”

Kris grabs the bottle and looks at the la­bel. “Coconut wa­ter?” he says skep­tic­ally.

“It’s good for you.”

“Like ve­get­ables?” Kris asks as he opens the bottle.

Adam rolls his eyes. “Drink it. You need to hy­drate and you’ll feel bet­ter.”

Kris takes a sip. It’s not that bad. Still, he’d prefer reg­u­lar old tap wa­ter to this.

“This is go­ing to take a couple minutes to heat up,” Adam says. “Do you want any­thing else?”

“Don’t care as long as I’m get­ting fed.”

Kris shrugs off the tow­el and sets it to the counter. He tangles his feet with the sup­ports of the stool so the toes of the slip­pers are just barely touch­ing. He then mo­ment­ar­ily droops un­til his face is on the counter. He sighs. He’s so frickin’ tired. He just wants to sleep after the chick­en curry, but knows that’s not pos­sible. It’s too close to dusk, now.

Kris gives a start and sits up im­me­di­ately when a hand touches his shoulder, his heart leap­ing in­to his throat. In­stead of draw­ing back, the hand tight­ens its grip. He looks to see Adam stand­ing next to him with an ice­pack in-hand.

“It’s just me,” Adam says quietly be­fore press­ing the ice­pack to Kris’ bruised chin.

Kris winces and shud­ders when he gets a sud­den chill. “That hurts,” he says tightly, but doesn’t pull away even as his chin aches. This is doc­tor’s or­ders. Sort of.

Breath calm­ing, Kris trades stares with Adam. “I can hold it,” Kris even­tu­ally says, when the star­ing starts to feel awk­ward.

Adam fal­ters with a small frown and sets the ice­pack on the counter. He then goes to re­trieve the curry, which Kris can smell the mo­ment Adam opens the mi­crowave. He breathes in deeply. It smells so good.

“I’ll let you eat in peace,” Adam says after bring­ing Kris the curry and utensils. He leaves the kit­chen with a sigh.

The curry is hot enough to make Kris sweat, which he en­joys. He puts it away quickly, not tak­ing the time to sa­vor it. He’s too hungry for that. Af­ter­wards, he washes out the dish in the sink and rinses the utensils, too. It’s habit from liv­ing in an apart­ment with a min­im­al sup­ply of forks.

Kris walks out of the kit­chen and wanders to the foy­er of the home. The se­cur­ity guard is nowhere to be seen. In fact, he doesn’t see a single per­son bust­ling around do­ing chores like he had earli­er. “Hello?” he calls out.

“We’re the only two here.” Adam’s voice spins Kris around. “The sun should be go­ing down soon.”

Kris nods as he stares up at Adam, who’s at the top of the stairs. He ges­tures to the in­tact win­dows on either side of the front door. “Your people work fast.”

“Money makes them faster,” Adam replies be­fore tak­ing a step down the stairs. “How are you feel­ing?”

“Like I want to claw my skin off.” Kris frowns as he flexes his fin­gers. His agit­a­tion level is run­ning high.

Adam nods as if he un­der­stands. “We should get ready.”

“Ready?” Kris’ brow rises. He doesn’t really un­der­stand how you get “ready” to Hulk-out.

“Come up­stairs and I’ll ex­plain.”

Feel­ing crotchety and ap­pre­hens­ive, Kris slowly as­cends the stairs. Adam leads him in­to a room that has no win­dows with a large area rug on the floor and a ta­ble in one corner. The rug looks like it’s been through some battles with claws. Kris swal­lows roughly when he un­der­stands be­fore Adam even says, “This is the nor­mal trans­form­a­tion room.”

“All right,” Kris says with a shrug. “What now?”

“You should get un­dressed.”

Kris blinks and his brow frets. “Ex­cuse me?”

“So you don’t des­troy the clothes,” Adam says, which ex­plains why he was na­ked when Kris first saw him.

Kris feels a flush creep­ing up his neck as Adam con­tin­ues to stare at him. “Um, I’d rather not,” he says, his mod­esty tak­ing over.

Adam turns around and goes to the ta­ble. “I prom­ise I won’t look.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Kris says, still re­fus­ing to get na­ked in front of someone he barely knows.

Adam starts un­dress­ing and Kris can’t bring him­self to look away. It’s Adam frickin’ Lam­bert, after all. He should have a cam­era; he could make thou­sands of dol­lars off of this. Kris im­me­di­ately feels guilty for the thought. He couldn’t do that to Adam. He couldn’t do that any­one, even if they did kid­nap and tor­ture him.

Kris looks away when Adam slips out of his black cot­ton pants. He puts a hand to the nearest wall and sighs. “What do you think is go­ing to hap­pen?” he asks, anxi­ety eat­ing at him.

Adam laughs lightly. “I’m not really wor­ried, if that’s what you’re ask­ing.”

“Why not?” Kris frowns. “We could – we could end up killing each oth­er,” he stam­mers be­fore bit­ing his bot­tom lip in worry. Why doesn’t Adam care more about this? This is ser­i­ous stuff. He doesn’t want to die.

“You think too much,” Adam says with a sigh.

“I don’t want to die.”

“You won’t.”

Kris lets his arm fall and turns to look over his shoulder. “How do you know that?” he asks a now na­ked Adam. It doesn’t both­er Kris. He’s seen plenty of na­ked guys in his life as a former high school jock. He nev­er minded see­ing the oth­er buff bod­ies in the showers, but shied away from put­ting him­self on dis­play.

Adam shakes his head. “At least take off the slip­pers? Those are kind of ex­pens­ive.”

Rolling his eyes, Kris toes out of the fuzzy things and kicks them aside. “Well,” Kris be­gins after an­oth­er pause, “I can’t say it’s been nice know­ing you.”

Adam ducks his gaze. “You really know how to lay it on thick, Kris,” he says quietly.

Kris doesn’t get the chance to ask Adam what he means. In the next second, both of them are fall­ing to the floor – Adam huff­ing, Kris shout­ing in pain – be­fore everything goes black.

* * *

Morn­ing is a rude awaken­ing for Kris. He comes to with a soft sniff and mur­murs when he gets a whiff of sweat, co­logne, and car­pet. His head is throb­bing and his shoulders ache. Without open­ing his eyes, Kris nuzzles the pil­low un­der his head un­til his nose rubs against it and he real­izes that he’s sleep­ing on hu­man flesh.

Kris’ eyes fly open and he gives a startled gasp. It’s a shoulder and arm that he’s been cud­dling with, which hap­pen to be at­tached to a drowsy Adam. Kris’ lashes flut­ter as he tries to fo­cus. His in­stinct is to crawl away as fast as pos­sible, but Adam’s hold­ing onto him, mut­ter­ing “No, wait…”

“Let go of me!” Kris says frantic­ally as he tugs his body and digs his hands in­to the car­pet, des­per­ately try­ing to get away. Adam’s hold goes limp and Kris drags in a sharp breath when Adam’s hand slips over his bare hip as he crawls.

Nearly crash­ing in­to a cof­fee ta­ble, Kris scrambles away un­til he’s a good dis­tance from Adam and he col­lapses. He gets a sud­den chill and shivers. His head pounds as he rises to his knees, but stays on his hands. Chest heav­ing, he tries to find his breath as the world spins around him. He’s cer­tain he’s go­ing to puke.

“Whoa, slow down,” Adam says. “Slow down or you’re go­ing to pass out.”

Kris shivers as he sucks down air; his head dipped low to the floor. Adam is soon at his side and rub­bing his back – his _bare_ back.

“Calm down, babe,” Adam says with shush­ing noise.

Still shak­ing, Kris shoots Adam a glare. “Where’re my clothes?!” he de­mands.

Adam’s hand moves to mas­sage the back of Kris’ neck. Kris shuts his eyes and sets his jaw. He really doesn’t ap­pre­ci­ate the fawn­ing.

“I guess your oth­er side didn’t like pants,” Adam says quietly.

“So, this is funny to you?!” Kris snaps.

“No,” Adam sighs. “But I know just as much as you do of what happened last night, which is nada.”

Kris leans down to press his fore­head to the floor be­fore col­lapsing onto his side. Adam’s hands fol­low him for the en­tire trip. Kris looks up in­to Adam’s con­cerned face. “Is there a sheet or something I can use?” he asks, get­ting testy. “I don’t want to be na­ked on some stranger’s floor.”

Frown­ing thinly and pos­sibly look­ing hurt, Adam glances around the room. He slowly walks away on his knees be­fore re­turn­ing with a throw blanket, which he lays over Kris and Kris curls up in­to a tight ball. He still feels naus­eous. “Thanks,” he huffs.

Kris sees that Adam is watch­ing him, but he ig­nores it. He just wants the room to stop go­ing topsy-turvy on him. “I don’t re­mem­ber a thing,” he mumbles after sigh­ing and con­sid­er­ing fall­ing back to sleep, there on the floor, which he de­cides would be a really bad idea.

Adam laughs softly. “Even­tu­ally, you’re go­ing to get used to that.”

“I don’t like it,” Kris grumbles. “At all.”

“Do you really want to know what you were do­ing as a wolf?” Adam asks, put­ting em­phas­is on the “really.”

Kris goes mo­ment­ar­ily quiet as he con­siders this. “Yes.” He can’t stand the fact that he has no con­trol over his own body and wants to know what hap­pens, every de­tail. He wants to know be­cause it will make him feel a little saner about the whole or­deal.

“Hmmm,” Adam hums. “Well, I think I can blame you for one thing.”

“Which is?” Kris glances around to Adam. He jerks away to shield his eyes as Adam turns around and shim­mies his hips, which shakes his very pale butt and its very dis­tinct­ive wound.

“Oh no,” Kris gasps. “I bit you?”

“Yeah, you bit me on the ass, babe. No deny­ing that.”

“Oh gosh, does it hurt?” Kris babbles, know­ing it’s a stu­pid ques­tion. Of course it hurts. It’s a wolf bite.

“Like hell,” Adam says as he turns back around. “But I’ll deal with that later. I’m too tired to worry about it. At least I’m not bleed­ing.”

“I’m sorry,” Kris says, feel­ing re­morse for something he knows he couldn’t con­trol.

Adam’s hand is then on his shoulder and Kris rolls to look at Adam, mak­ing his head feel dizzy. Adam gives him a small smile as he tucks the blanket un­der Kris’ shoulders and sides. Kris’ brow rises. This is weird.

“It’s okay,” Adam says with a shake of his head. “I think I de­serve a little nip after what I’ve put you through. At least we didn’t kill each oth­er.” He stops with a hand on either side of Kris and he looms above. “You should get some rest. Do you want to stay here or go to a guest room?”

“To­geth­er?” Kris says dumbly.

Adam laughs, it’s weak and more of a sigh, but still it’s a laugh. “No. That’s not what I meant, but if that’s what you want…” He’s blush­ing.

Kris shakes his head slowly as he sits up. “No. I don’t. I’m just not think­ing clearly. My head is killing me.”

“I’ll get you something for that,” Adam says with a nod. He stands up and holds out his hand, which Kris takes and pulls him­self up to his feet. The blanket im­me­di­ately goes around his waist.

“Maybe some pants, too?” Kris sug­gests, mak­ing Adam laugh some more. Still dizzy, Kris has to lean against Adam for sup­port.

“You really are mod­est,” Adam says, put­ting an arm around Kris’ shoulders.

Kris shrugs him off and con­tin­ues to walk, slowly. “Be­ing na­ked around strangers isn’t my thing.”

“I don’t have to be a stranger,” Adam says with a sigh.

Ig­nor­ing that, Kris keeps walk­ing. Everything hurts; he just wants a bed, a couch, any­thing to crash on. Adam leads him to a guest bed­room. Kris keeps his eyes aver­ted to avoid look­ing at Adam’s bite. It makes him feel ter­rible. Can’t he make it through one night of this without at­tack­ing someone?

For­get­ting about pants, a na­ked Kris crawls un­der­neath the bed cov­ers. He lets out little grunts as he tries to make him­self com­fort­able and not put his weight on any spe­cif­ic bruise. He’s fully settled in and ready for sleep when Adam re­turns to the room. Kris raises his brow and Adam prof­fers and shakes a bottle of as­pir­in. He puts it and a glass of wa­ter to the bed­side ta­ble.

“Thanks.”

Kris is stunned stiff when Adam leans down to kiss his fore­head, cheek, and the corner of his mouth. “Sleep, baby,” Adam says quietly as he pets Kris’ messy hair. “We’ll talk later.”

“What the heck was that?” Kris sput­ters.

Adam smiles shyly in the door­way. “I’m glad you’re here, Kris,” he says be­fore clos­ing the door.

Kris won­ders if he should just go home. He’s asleep be­fore he can de­cide.


End file.
